1) Where do we come from?
I used to ignore this question as irrelevant.
It's not.
2) Why do we live the way we do?
I assumed we lived "the way we do" because man naturally progresses to better ways of doing things. It's how we evolve.
But do we really? I'm not so sure anymore.
3) What does the future hold for me, and for mankind?
As a child and young adult I thought the future would be a utopia where mankind conquered the problems we face today - death, old age, hate, war, famine, weather, disease, space travel. These would be outdated 20th century problems defeated by "science."
I've waited for the inevitable solutions to these inconveniences. We're reaching the end of the first decade of the 21st century and they still define our civilization.
"Why?"
Where's my flying car? Where's the super tomato that cures cancer and grows in five seconds?
I'm still waiting for that "perfect chicken" and I'm worried about what happens when I get it.
(Don't worry I have a whole separate rant for that comic later).
We are not the adults we imagined as children. We are not the society that we prepared for in school. We are not the civilization that millions of years of evolution and human culture have worked and survived for.
We are something else.
I am at a logic block - a chicken, egg situation. If things are the way they are (and I'll be talking about exactly what that is) I'm forced to ask:
Which came first, the current state of humanity or our present day civilization?
Who created whom?
The answer to this and many more questions is in the way our society views itself. I'll be examining newspaper stories, current events, personal stories, interviews, internet phenomena, and even comics to find out what that is. In the words of Daniel Quinn, I'll transform myself into an "alien anthropologist" looking at humanity from the outside in.
I'm excited at what I'll find.
So here we go.
Welcome to the Chicken Egg Situation.
